Dancing in the Baron's Shadow (13 page)

Raymond sighed and looked at Sauveur. “How much will we need?”

“Oh, my friend!” Sauveur raised his hand to stop him. “Please. There will be no talk of money. You saved my life, and now it's my turn to return the favor.”

Raymond felt as if God was finally listening. “And my brother?”

“That—” Sauveur paused and thought for a long moment.

“I have to try everything in my power,” Raymond said. “I can't let him die.”

“I will make some calls,” the rebel journalist said quietly.

Raymond's eyes grew wide. He almost wanted to grin, but his body was too tired.

“First, we need to confirm his status in the prison,” Sauveur said. “Then we'll have to talk about what to do.”

The women came in, carrying food and children with them.

“Let's eat first. You need it.
Sak vid pa kanpe.
An empty sack will not stand upright.”

They all sat together, sharing a loaf of bread, pouring hot tea in enamel cups. Raymond watched rogue lemongrass leaves swirl in his cup. When he brought it to his lips, he closed his eyes and felt the warm, sweet liquid revive his entire being.

Claudette filled Raymond's bowl to the brim with stew. He was grateful for her kindness, and he waited for his host to eat first. Sauveur held his son on his lap and poured hot tea in a saucer for him. Eve sat across the table from him, feeding her daughter more bread. They silently reveled in the aroma of fish and onions and peppers. Raymond ate quickly, shoveling spoonfuls into his mouth. He could not remember his last proper meal.

When he was done, he watched Eve stir more sugar and tea leaves in her cup. Their eyes met over the babble of drooling babies and the clatter of spoons against the chipped rims of saucers. For the first time since their lives had been brutally interrupted, she offered him half a smile, a crescent moon against her tired face.

ELEVEN

N
icolas opened his eyes and saw Boss lower his head. The old man—a lifelong mason and handyman before his arrest—watched, unperturbed, as a cockroach crawled between his legs. He let the roach brush against his black toenails. When they'd brought Nicolas to the cell, Boss was the only one who had acknowledged him, whispered to him, nursed him as best he could. Nicolas felt broken in half, and Boss hadn't moved from his side while the other cellmates had slept.

Nicolas watched the bug until Boss looked up and caught his gaze again.

“Maître, you don't look good. We need to clean your wounds before they get infected.”

The old man stood up and looked over his shoulder. His thin hands reached inside his old, worn briefs and pulled out a wrinkled member barely visible inside a shrub of gray pubic hair. Nicolas raised his hand to stop the man.

“No.”

“It's the only way,” Boss said.

Another prisoner muttered something behind them in the dark. Nicolas couldn't see who it was. Shocked, he tried to sit up in protest.

“In here,” Boss said, “if you don't want to die of gangrene or fever, you have to use urine to clean your wounds, Maître.”

“I…I need a doctor,” Nicolas muttered. He curled into a ball, his body pressed against the wall. Nicolas's famed logic, what people called his
bon ange,
his guardian angel, had taken flight. He wanted to smash his head against the wall. All of it seemed like a long, vivid, tortuous nightmare from which he couldn't wake up.

“Doctor?” Boss chuckled. He looked over his shoulder.

Others, Nicolas realized, were awake and paying attention. There was a general sentiment of amusement, but no one seemed to have the strength to laugh.

“There is no doctor to help you,” Boss said, his hand still wrapped around his penis. “I don't think you understand. There is no medicine in Fort Dimanche. The closest thing you get to a doctor here is a torturer. Trust me, Maître L'Eveillé. There's no healing for the already dead. No salvation.”

Nicolas stared at the old man. He flexed his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut, a violent sob rending his chest. He then turned his head away and Boss sighed out loud. When the warm, foul liquid splashed over his face and chest, he groaned. They should have killed him in that interrogation room. Boss's words tolled in his head as Boss, and then another prisoner, and another emptied their bladders over his raw wounds.

There's no healing for the already dead,
Nicolas repeated to himself.
No salvation.

Nicolas woke up screaming from a nightmare in which he could feel the warden's teeth sink into his flesh, the monster's face obscured in darkness. When he opened his eyes, there was a violent pounding on the door. Where was he?

He was in the cell. It came back to him now, slowly. The banging reverberated across the room. Nicolas couldn't see anything through the darkness at first, and he had no idea what time it was, what day, or how long he'd been asleep. A constellation of bumps had formed on his back and his legs where the bedbugs had feasted on his bruised skin.

“You were dreaming?”

Nicolas thought he recognized Boss's voice. He groaned once for yes.

“You were crying in your sleep,” Boss said. “Don't worry. It's normal. You'll dream about your lectures, and you'll dream about your wife. You'll dream about your little girl, and you'll dream about that notorious book of yours. But after a while, the dreams will go away. All of them. And you will have relief.”

Nicolas's heart was pounding. Suddenly, the old man seemed crazy, demented.

“How do you know these things about me?” Nicolas demanded.

“You talked a lot the other night,” Boss stated gently. “After they brought you back.”

Boss turned to scratch something on the wall with a small piece of metal. It was a broken handle from an old
kin.

“Today is May twenty-eighth,” he said. “I tell myself the date every day. It's important. Now sit up. The guards are here.”

Nicolas tried his best to sit up. Some of the men sprang to their feet. Before Nicolas could turn to Boss, light from the hallway spilled into the cell and revealed a guard standing at the door holding a club.

“No sudden movements,” he shouted.

Another silhouette stood against the light. Nicolas couldn't see who it was, but he made out aluminum plates being pushed into the cell and smelled rancid cooking oil. Someone else was there in shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. A kid like any other you might see on the boulevards, carrying a cauldron by the handle and serving them a watery, oily cornmeal with beans and bread. The guard held the door open as the plates glided in.

Nicolas watched in horror as the prisoners leapt forward, fighting to grab a plate. They attacked the meal with their fingers.

“It's hot! Watch out,” they cried, shifting the plates from one hand to another, sucking on their fingers and blowing on their food. The cornmeal, still steaming, scalded their skin, but they had no utensils and no other choice but to dig in with their bare hands.

Some ate their bread; others broke it and stuffed it under their mats. Nicolas watched them suck the meal caking their crusty fingers. He heard the smacking of lips, and he grimaced in disgust. He wasn't touching his plate. He'd lost his appetite long ago, and the sight of the oil separating on the surface of his food turned his stomach again. It was the kind of food Nicolas would never dream of feeding a dog. He thought of Eve, who had always scolded their servant, Freda, for using too much oil in their food, and he was moved by the memory of her hand as she meticulously drained the oil from their meal at the dinner table, shaking her head in exasperation.

Nicolas looked away from the spectacle, but there in front of him was Boss, scraping his plate with his roll of stale bread. The corners of his lips and his beard were speckled with grit.

“Are we all animals?” Nicolas whispered, unable to mask his repulsion. He covered his mouth with the back of his hand to control his urge to vomit.

Boss continued to chew, unfazed.

“You eat too, Maître,” he grunted, his mouth full. “You need it. You need strength.”

Nicolas glanced at his plate sitting by the mat. The glob of cornmeal smelled toxic, and the bread was spotted with green mold.

“If you don't want yours, I'll have it,” another man said, blowing on his hot cornmeal before stuffing his mouth with it. Nicolas noticed how his ribs nearly poked through his skin. He looked to be around twenty.

“Eat it quickly,” Boss said. “It could be all you get for the day.”

Nicolas grabbed the bread and struggled to open his mouth. He felt sick, but he knew Boss was right. He had to eat something if he wanted to live. He hadn't expected to be alive this long. He brought a piece of bread to his lips, his joints aching from the warden's beating. Chewing was excruciating, and the heat from the cornmeal made him realize he was missing several teeth. Down the hall, the guard was banging on other doors.

“Plates! Now!” the guard shouted.

Nicolas chewed faster on the bread. With his fingers, he peeled off the moldy crust. Boss leaned in and grabbed Nicolas's plate, and like the other prisoners had started to do, he flung it at the wall behind them. The cornmeal clung to the chipping surface for a moment before dripping. Nicolas didn't have time to protest. The steps in the hallway were approaching. Then the banging came again. Nicolas jumped back. That noise, the sound of guards banging on metal doors, had begun to leave its invisible scars on his psyche.

“Plates!”

Nicolas watched the prisoners slam their meal on the wall and lick their plates clean. The guards were coming back to collect the dishes from them. They'd barely been given five minutes to eat. Outrage crawled up his throat. When the nightstick banged the door once more, he groaned as if feeling the blows and the violation all over again.

The door opened, and the men extended their plates forward.

The guard hovered over the cook, glaring at the prisoners. The cook now held a bucket, and with a rusty aluminum ladle, he poured a single serving of water onto each dirty plate. The men gulped greedily, too starved and dehydrated to protest. Two prisoners punched the bottom of their plates in with all their might. Once, twice, three times. Nicolas covered his ears.
Punch. Punch. Punch.
The sound was sickening. They were trying to turn their plates into bowls to hold the water. They drank avidly, the water picking up remains of food and dripping past the corners of their mouths, washing down their chin. Nicolas sat on his mat, shaking his head.

“You!” The guard with the nightstick pointed at him. “Didn't you hear me? Hand over your plate!”

Nicolas couldn't move. He sat there, staring at a man he didn't know but loathed, as he loathed every cruel, monstrous hand that had tossed him into this dungeon.

Boss grabbed the plate from the ground and slid it forward.

“Don't make trouble,” he whispered. “You're going to get us killed.”

“Shut your
djòl!
” the guard shouted.

With his boot, he kicked Nicolas's plate out into the hallway. The men all held out their plates and pleaded.

“More water! Please. More water, we beg you!”

“Turn in your goddamn plates before I break your skulls with my
cocomakak!
” the guard roared, waving his club in the air.

Nicolas watched the men slide their plates out of the cell with reluctance. In spite of everything that had happened, some ember of his former pride flared up and his blood boiled. How could these men allow themselves to be diminished like this? They were like children: obedient, submissive, cowardly. It was debasing and he couldn't bear to watch it. But what else could they do in the face of barbarism?

The guard pointed his club at Nicolas, who remained still, clenched his jaw, and bit down hard to swallow his rage.

“No water for you,” the guard spat. “I hope you learned your lesson.”

The guard shut the door and locked it, leaving them to grope around in the darkness. Nicolas felt another sting on his mat, and he twitched, shifting to sit on the cement.

“Don't be a smart-ass,” Boss whispered, crouching in his corner. “If you defy them, they'll beat all of us in here, no questions asked. You hear me? Don't be stupid.”

Nicolas collapsed onto his back in the dark, his throat parched.

“And what happened to you, Boss, outside, that you're in here now?”

Nicolas wanted an answer, but Boss had moved away from him, and for the first time, he did not seem inclined to chat.

The room they were in was about thirteen by fourteen feet, with cracked walls plagued with bloodstains and mildew. Above them, a white lightbulb was screwed into a socket, but there was no light. Nicolas peered at an opening in the wall, a small rectangle of a window. But through it, he couldn't see the sky or any real light. Instead, he saw boots and passing shadows of men pacing outside in the yard, back and forth. Guards.

Nicolas felt sick. He stood up abruptly, and the men around him jumped back in surprise, pressing their bodies against the wall. Nicolas rushed to vomit into the
kin,
a bucket that was already overflowing with feces and urine. Flies swarmed around its rim.

After Nicolas had spat the last contents of his stomach and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, somebody shoved him from behind. When he turned to look, large, bloodshot eyes bulged at him.

“Listen up,” the prisoner said. “I'm in charge of the
kin
around here. You want to use it, you ask me for permission.”

The large man's name was Sonson, Nicolas later learned from Boss.

“But we call the old shit-minder ‘Major.' He's ex-Macoute, arrested for firearm contraband. Apparently, the government has no tolerance for people stealing if it's from them. Who knew?” The old man chuckled, pulling on a clump of matted beard.

Nicolas couldn't respond.

Prisoners slept in organized shifts. It was a system that had been developed for the benefit of all, since the cells were packed far over capacity.

Cells in the fortress, Nicolas was told, often held up to forty men. Nicolas's cellmates had been reduced to eighteen before he arrived. The numbers kept growing as more prisoners arrived; this made it impossible for all the bodies to lie down at the same time. In four- to six-hour shifts, they balanced their lives between sleeping, standing, sitting, and taking small steps between each other's feet to keep the circulation going. Nicolas found this impossible at first and often remained wide-awake, learning to tune out the shrieks and bellows of torture victims down the hall. After a while, though, he would rest against the wall and succumb to fatigue.

When he was awake, Nicolas heard everything: a centipede crawling on a mat, rats scurrying in the corners, snoring, prisoners passing gas in their sleep or shitting in the bucket, and
the lament of those who never gave up praying. Bedbugs and roaches infested every corner, and on the hottest afternoons, he could hear men squashing the body lice they picked off their skin. Now that Nicolas had been there a few days, his nose could distinguish good urine from bad, and he could smell blood from a cell away, where a young man lay comatose after a torture session had cracked his skull. He could smell the body odor, the infected wounds, the stale breath of fellow prisoners; the grease and food particles caked on the walls. All of it coated the insides of his nostrils and burned his eyes.

Feeble rays of light and gusts of air streamed in from the small window above their door. It was too high for anyone to reach, so the inmates had developed a ladder system. They called it “climbing the tree,” gripping the wall with hands and feet to hoist themselves up. This had to be timed when the guards weren't pacing the halls, and once they had an all clear, they'd reach the opening, hoping to communicate with the cell opposite. Because the window was so close to the ceiling, the climbers often found themselves in an awkward position with their head cocked to the side, ear pressed against their shoulder, twisting their neck to catch a glimpse of the hall.